Today, we’re sharing Tayari’s essay about her first published story, a memory of her teenage self. This essay appeared onBookReporter.com in May.

From Tayari Jones:

From a very young age, I understood myself to be a tortured, unappreciated artiste. As a little girl, I wrote stories that I stapled together as little books. There was one I was particularly proud of, A TRIP TO MARS, that I wrote and illustrated in kindergarten. No one in my family has any recollection of this or any of the books in that series and there must have been a dozen. In ninth grade, I was enrolled in a high school that specialized in math and science although I was not good in math and I had no interest in science. Still, it was a good school, one of the best magnet programs in the city of Atlanta and besides, it was near our house.

A year before graduation, my English teacher pulled me aside, inviting me to enter a city-wide creative writing contest. Keep in mind that my peers were winning opportunities to attend the international science fair in Japan, yet I had caused a minor catastrophe attempting to concoct the “acid rain” required for my science project. I remember smiling up at my teacher, delighted to be noticed. “Yes ma’am. I’m ready.”